Indistinguishable from Jesse

My favorite ads from the 2007 Super Bowl:

• Doritos: crash
• Coca-Cola: GTA
• Budweiser: high-tech game
• Jack in the Box: just like dad
• E-Trade: one finger
• Blockbuster: mouse
• FedEx: don't judge
• Bud Light: hitchhiker

Special congratulations go to Budweiser for selling me on holographic tabletop football and to Coca-Cola for selling me on Grand Theft Auto: Altruism. Please let me know when these products become available.

Keepers of Lists rejected this list I wrote, so I'm posting it here (without yay/nay voting, unfortunately).

1. They're not with us, so they must be against us.
2. Once we control Geneva, we can modify the Geneva Convention.
3. When was the last time Switzerland won a war?
4. To see how long they remain neutral.
5. They refuse to refund us for the holes in their cheese.
6. Zurich and Geneva recognize gay marriage.
7. Four percent of Switzerland is muslim.
8. To freeze (and take) ill-gotten funds in Swiss bank accounts.
9. Their army keeps supplying small knives to terrorists.
10. To send a message to all the other "neutral" countries.
11. They would never expect it.
12. Easiest way to go to war with the entire rest of the world.
13. Retaliation for tricking us into signing the Geneva Convention after WWI.
14. To sieze control of lucrative domain names such as getri.ch and coo.ch.

• Signs You've Played Too Many Console RPGs - I created the list and added 32 items, including several that my friends Tanis and Melissa came up with. Many of the items were inspired by The Grand List Of Console Role Playing Game Clichés. Other Keepers of Lists members added 11 items, but I think most of them didn't understand the topic of the list.
• New Units of Measurement - I created the list and added 22 items. Most of the items are not original and many come from The Bent of Tau Beta Pi, Spring 1988 or Al Lowe.
• Most Ridiculous Statements Made In Insurance Claims - I added 16 items.
• Odd Places To Find Your Picture - I added 10 items.

Please vote "yea" on items you like in these lists :)

Graduate school

I'm the TA for a discrete mathematics class. My responsibilities include running a Monday discussion, holding an office hour, and grading tests. I've led one discussion so far, and it wasn't as hard as I expected. One student even commented that I seemed to be prepared (hah!). In addition to TAing, I'm taking an undergrad class in cryptography and a graduate class in computability and complexity.

Overall, I'm not enjoying graduate school. I don't have many friends here, classes aren't particularly interesting, and I don't know what I'm going to research. I enjoy thinking about the computational complexity of puzzles and games, but that doesn't mean computational complexity research is for me. I'm interested in what it takes to write secure software and design secure user interfaces, but I don't know if those are real research areas.

Music

I'm no longer listening to Claremont Shades, USC Sirens, Blackmore's Night, Sting, Sixpence, Alanis, No Doubt, Vienna Teng, or Máire Brennan continuously. Instead, I'm listening to Evanescence - Fallen (mostly Bring me to Life, Whisper, and Imaginary), Joan Baez - Play Me Backwards (especially Stones in the Road and Through Your Hands), Strunz and Farah - Americas, and James Taylor - Greatest Hits continuously. I discovered Evanescence after hearing three college a cappella groups perform versions of Bring me to Life at two concerts in one weekend.

I found out that the song from Final Fantasy 6 that I feel like I've known forever is called "Terra's theme" or "Tina's theme".

Games

I'm addicted to a puzzle game by Pāvils Jurjāns called Net. I discovered it by reading Selene's game notes, which mostly covers RPGs. I think it is NP-complete, but I haven't thought about it carefully. I haven't played much Minesweeper (NP-complete) or Marble (I don't even know if it's decidable) lately.

I've also been playing RPGs. I played Wild Arms (ok) and Chrono Cross (good) over Christmas break. I tried Vagrant Story but didn't like it. Now I'm playing Xenogears. I like it so far, but it's very easy to get lost in 3D areas such as cities and forests. I will probably play Final Fantasy 9 next.

All of the RPGs are for the Playstation, so I've been them using an emulator called epsxe along with Pete Bernert's graphics plugins, some of which are open source. Playing games using an emulator has several advantages over using a console system: I can change the game's speed on the fly, save or load at any time, and play at the same time as my brother. It also has several disadvantages: I have to tweak the emulator settings for each game to keep it from freezing, and I have to choose between pirating the games and Playstation BIOS (illegal) or buying a Playstation and the games and then downloading them anyway (ridiculous).

Anime

Cal Animage Beta has been showing one episode a week of Midori no Hibi, Bleach, Samurai Champloo, Kyou Kara Maou, Phantom Memory Kurau, and Tactics. Midori no Hibi is my favorite of these series.

Movies

I loved Kinsey. My favorite scene was the one with the lesbian woman (not a sex scene). The religious right's response to the movie made it even better (more Kinsey-related links). I liked The Incredibles and Garden State. I didn't like Team America, and I found Mean Creek confusing.

Keepers of Lists

I contributed high-scoring items to Signs You Are Not Drunk Enough, Reasons To Move To Canada, and Signs You Should Stop Writing Items For Keepers. I contributed more items to Signs You May Be A Terrorist than the person who started the list. Over half of my items have been getting getting positive scores recently, which is a welcome change. I submitted five new lists, which will be accepted or rejected for publication over the next few months.

Existing personal projects

Pornzilla and Thumbs have been getting a lot of hits, even though I have not put much effort into them lately. The top five search phrases that bring people to squarefree.com are "porn" (150/day), "pornzilla", "thumbs", "best porn", and "free porn". (The next two are not porn-related: "bookmarklets" (25/day) and "burning edge".) I've only been updating The Burning Edge once a week, in part because the Firefox trunk isn't very exciting right now.

I'm way behind with incorporating feedback and submissions for bookmarklets and Thumbs.

I wrote two thirds of the items on Top 21 Signs You May Be A Terrorist, today's list on Keepers of Lists.

My del.icio.us bookmarks. This may be the end of my link propogation posts.

• Keep your Jesus off my penis. Wow. NSFR.
• This Land (unframed). So funny, I didn't mind it letting Bush off easy.
• Bush in 41.2 seconds. Surprised me.
• Yet another edited State of the Union address. Not as good as the ones from previous years.

• Wedding dress worn twice: by the seller's ex-wife at the wedding, and by the seller to take the photos.
• An Erdös number of 5 (the high bidder wasn't serious)
• The air guitar used by Ben Jovi